“I think these people want to kill us,” a gay man will tell the boyfriend whose arm he nervously clings to at a truck stop outside Omaha, amidst stern glares from tough guys in denim. (Those familiar with rumors about truck stops suspect the stares mean something other than hatred, but that’s another story.) Besides being flat and homophobic, Nebraska is full of greasy food and tornadoes – two things that are bound to ruin a well-sculpted figure.
Instead of boring plains, gay people like to live where there are things above and around them, wrapping the view-plane like a cozy hug. That means hilly places, like California, or forested places, like Massachusetts. But what gay men like most of all is living under 30-story buildings – which make up the least flat landscape you can think of – in a city wrapped in hills, under a cover of permanent clouds and fog, in a region blanketed by hundreds of miles of breathtakingly tall redwood trees. (Hell-ooo San Francisco).
Feminist intellectuals have noted that the modern skyscraper – the pinnacle of Western architecture – is extremely phallic-looking; it is a long and tall, (ahem) erect structure, which reveals the male dominance of Western culture.
We are not so sure these phallic buildings explain patriarchy – penises are also very phallic, and you’d think penises would be most often visualized in a female-dominated society. Meanwhile absolutely anything can be described as phallic if you use your imagination, including breasts and nipples, and that doesn’t make sense. But in any case, practically every culture in human history has phallic-looking elements in their buildings – from a Byzantine dome to an Egyptian obelisk – and from a Japanese pagoda to an Islamic minaret. Surprise. Every male architect in human history was gay.
Gay men, like all men, are extremely visual – gay people perhaps even a little more so than straight men – and gay men like to notice the way things look. That is maybe why, to give an uncharacteristically biological and un-clever analysis of culture for Stuff gay people like, gay men get involved in a lot of visual professions like theater, interior decorating and photography.
When it comes to visuality, buildings are indeed something to look at; the first thought to come to mind when you think of a city is its skyline. Gay people also like designing things, and appreciating things that other people have designed. That makes architecture pretty much a perfect field for gay people, and makes commenting on architecture pretty much a perfect conversation topic for a gay man to prove his intellectual abilities and worldliness.Stuff Gay People Like (SGPL) is a satirical/cultural column featured in Out Front Colorado. Visit the Facebook Page or view the whole list. @StuffGayPplLike/#SGPL on Twitter.
